


Art exceeds life exceeds art.

by FLWhite



Category: Drake & Josh
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Meta, Metafandom, RPS - Freeform, Real Life, Real Person Slash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:19:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9498032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite
Summary: Drake and Josh and fandom.***But there Drake sat, the chuckle grown up into a boisterous laugh that shook him and bent him double, his head against his updrawn knees and his whole body quaking."Don't they say--what's that they say--art exceeds life?""Life exceeds art, I think," replied Josh, putting his hand around Drake's ankle."Whatever." Drake began to laugh again. "I'm down for a bubble bath."





	

_He crushed his lips violently against Drake’s. “Oh, brotha. You taste so good.” “Mm,” replied the slighter boy. “More…”_

He could not help a chortle as he switched to ten-point Arabella Florid, his—or rather, slashrchiq77’s--trademark, for “To be continued.” Oh, how they would wail for the sequel! Now, to post the thing: copy, and paste—

“Josh! Goddammit, what the hell are you doing holed up in the broom closet?” With the deftness born of experience, Joshua Peck closed the word processor window and switched tabs in his internet browser as Drake Bell, muttering something about irresponsibility, circled behind him and thrust his henna-colored head at the screen of Josh’s laptop.

“Japanese porn? Jesus, can’t it wait? We’re supposed to be doing a retake right now!”

“Oh, the one with just you and Miranda's over already?” He had long since learned the value of nonchalance. “’Kay, fine, I’m coming, you can quit your lecturing.” He put the computer on standby and stuck it under a rumpled jacket on the counter—sure, it contained all nineteen previous installments of his top-secret magnum opus in addition to the latest, but if he gave away anything by being less than perfectly casual, Drake would never give up until he’d rooted out exactly why his costar was acting so peculiarly.

So suddenly peculiarly; Josh had only discovered the forum, unabashedly christened DrakeJosh Forever, three weeks ago. It had, in his recollection, been an interesting experience. First, horror; the very top thread, all ablaze with replies, had been a 500-word smorgasbord of gay sexual techniques, attributed to himself, that he had never even imagined imagining, much less practiced on someone warm and breathing.

Horror continued at the fact that the someones warm-and-breathing posited by all these entrees in the buffet of boy-on-boy were invariably Drake. Drake being trussed up, Drake being covered in wax and chocolate topping, Drake being pierced by safety pins in terrifying locations.

Then, two and a half hours into his survey of the forum, horror began, horribly enough, dissolving into a flattered kind of pride. He’d never known he was so handy at Japanese rope bondage! And wow, if only he were really capable of fucking and doing a handstand and a split at the same time! Finally the ultimate moment, the Great Turning Point of Joshua Peck, arrived. The title was unprepossessing enough: “Makin’ Love.” Yeah yeah, he said to himself as he scrolled furiously through the opening paragraphs. A startling, drunken, with-tongue-and-everything kiss. Murmured conversations in their shared bedroom. Nothing special. Then he saw it, and a glare of white flashed behind his eyes.

 _"Hey," Josh said softly, and put his hand on Drake's waist, where a line of muscle melted into hipbone under that all-too-clingy shirt._ The memory of that taut springiness under his hand made him swallow. How could the author have known? In a panic he jabbed at the page up button. "Lovergirl69?" Her profile page declared that she "loves sparkly things, like The Boys!!!" He wanted to laugh and cry at once. A woman's intuition is a mighty thing, apparently. Might enough to guess something he thought was totally and completely his secret.

Yes, they had been under the influence. Yes, they'd been in their shared hotel room—the memory was hazy, but probably they'd been in New York. He had leaned over Drake, who was sprawled very messily on the divan, whispering "get up, you can't sleep there." Then he'd lost his balance somehow, and his entire palm was pressed flat against exactly that "line of muscle" Lovergirl69 described. Of course the shirt had been too clingy—it might even have been splashed with liquor at some point in the evening's debauches. And it had filled Josh's hand with a hot dancing tingle that flowed up and up until it burst into full flower in his cheeks, at which point Drake opened his eyes and said, "I might hurl."

Josh laughed to himself, because that had been exactly what had happened. Much more humorous in hindsight. Lovergirl69 hadn't been intuitive enough to include that bit.

"Gah!" Someone poked him viciously in the ribs. "What?"

"Josh, stop goofing _off_." Drake said, putting his face in his hands. The camerawoman was shaking her head. "This is, like, the jillionth take. Come on, man."

"Sorry," Josh said, meaning it; they did an acceptable run of the scene, which was not even very hard. But afterward the fever awoke anew in him, and he made a beeline for his dressing room to post Chapter Ten. _wow you are like amazing! keep it up girl!_ He snorted. _soooooo hott. I hipper ventilated the hole time._ The snort turned into a full-on guffaw; presently, gasping, Drake lifted his face to continue his daily once-over of the forum homepage. "Ooh," he clicked on an unread thread, "looks like someone's been busy."

He'd discovered DrakeJosh Forever almost as soon as it appeared, ultimate proof, he considered, of the value of his regular web searches for his name and Josh's. Not that he didn't feel a little guilty reading about himself indulging in every manner of vice imaginable. But only a little. He comforted himself with the notion that reading pornography of himself, though nowhere near innocent, was at least better than doing coke, like every other young starlet of stage and screen, or jacking off all day in the broom closet to dubiously youthful-looking pictures of Japanese girls in sailor outfits, like Josh.

He pushed himself away from the desk, annoyed. God knew that he wasn't against self-loving, or even self-loving in peculiar places. Yet, somehow, Josh's stupid sheepish grin just made him gnash his teeth. After doing so for a few moments, he returned to the laptop to read the new thread. Slashrchiq77 had a nice way with words, and, unlike the bulk of the forum, could spell and punctuate accurately. _Aww why the suspense,_ he typed into the "Reply to Post" box. _I don’t like delayed gratification!_

Then again, tantalizing cliffhangers were definitely another of Slashrchiq77's strengths. She was also pretty damn straightforward with her love scenes: not much cuddliness, but abundant usage of "cock." Drake snickered, remembering her first post, "Heartbreak Motel," chapter one of which was as pure as new-fallen snow—and he'd said as much in his comment. Less than three hundred words into the next installment, she had let loose (a little awkwardly, he thought, but in an endearing way) the first euphemistic bit of genitalia, which Drake thought might have been "member," and after that it was just a steamy stream of prose punctuated by islands of occasionally goofy dialogue. He spun a few circles in his chair, hijacked from the set because the one he had in trailer was wheel-less, but jammed his feet against the wall to brake himself when from his computer came a tiny whirring, followed by a tinkle. A new private message on the forum? _Friend request_. He moved his pointer over the Read More button and clicked.

"Oh my god," Josh mumbled. The haze of liquor lifted with a jerk, and he felt his palms begin to sweat. Before him on the screen was a small pink-edged rectangle. In its middle a line of rotund text stood demurely: Lovergirl69 has accepted your friend request. He threw himself to his feet and went to the window, pushing at one of the heavy maroon curtains with a finger; outside, a streetlamp glowed. It traced in orange the left side of Drake, who was sunk, snoring and still pink-cheeked, deep into an armchair with his legs flung over one plush side, in the same position into which Josh had dropped him forty minutes earlier. Josh looked down at him for a little while and, pulse loud and hard, went back to the laptop. He hadn't felt this nervous about a girl since he was eleven, or maybe twelve.

And it wasn't even a real girl! He chuckled aloud, mostly at himself—of course it was a real girl, just a complete stranger. God, he was turning some kind of Internet-dating freak-- already somewhere in his mind a hopeful voice wondered if this could be something good. Maybe she would turn out to be an actual expert in some of those crazy things she wrote so much about.

 _How about Saturday at two?_ "Enter," said Drake, narrating for an invisible audience as he was wont when anxious. _Sure. In front of the Chinese Theater?_ She couldn't be horrible if she could type so fast. Could she?

"Okay," he murmured. "Enter." Something else occurred to him, and he typed frantically: _I liked the new chapter a lot._ It was incredible that he, Drake Bell, actor, and pretty much a rock star, was sitting here, half-hunched in the far corner of his dressing room making a chaste little date, complete with wholesome compliments, with a girl he knew only from her pornographic depictions of himself. Probably she'd turn out to be a lesbian. Why else would she be so enthusiastic about meeting Lovergirl69? And what a coincidence that she lived so close to the set!

Basically, he thought as he shook his head, there was a lot that was unbelievable about this whole shebang. _Oh, thanks!_ Drake let out a breath. The next line slashrchiq77 sent made him actually flush with—embarrassment? Anxiety? He clapped his hands to his face in horror. She was making him fourteen again without even being there in the flesh. _I really like your stories too. Can't wait to meet you._

 _Ditto_. Incredulously, he discovered that his hands were trembling. _See you then._

 

After a while Josh gave up trying to keep his eyes closed. Nightmarish visions had plagued him for the last three hours: an ancient woman with rolls of fat so enormous that she resembled the Michelin Man; a crone with no teeth and blackened fingernails; a gawky twelve-year-old asking him to autograph her polka-dotted underwear—eventually they ran together into one roiling mass of terrifying womanhood that propelled him straight up in bed, then back with a thump against his headboard. Sure, he didn't know who she was. But she'd know very well who he was, wouldn't she?

Clearly she spent plenty of time thinking about him. What had he been thinking? He had lines of people screaming—well, maybe not screaming, but at least speaking loudly and with excitement—for him, and he was getting all ridiculous about some lonely, albeit frighteningly talented, fanatic? Roaring, he thrust his fingers into his hair and bounced, landing directly on the squeaky spot in his mattress.

Drake, who was next door, had once called that squeak his nighttime nemesis. To avoid hitting it a second time, he twisted onto his side, and one flailing hand caught the corner of the alarm clock. The vague moonlight filtering through the drapes quivered as the clock descended in a lovely arc and smashed against the window. Josh held his breath. "Shit, man," came Drake's voice through the wall, accompanied by a knock. "You practicing trampolining or something?"

"Sorry." Luckily the glass seemed only to be cracked. "Good night." He pulled the bedclothes over himself and rolled vehemently into the bed, hoping that Drake would refrain from further chattering. But it was not to be. (It never was.)

"You doing anything tomorrow?" Drake sounded perfectly lucid; considering how many hours they'd both just put in, it was a surprise, for some reason a pleasant one. He wasn't alone in his insomnia, at least. "Yeah." Josh paused. That was foolish. He couldn't tell Drake about this newest proof of his utter idiocy--his utter lack of self-respect. But it was too late.

"What?" In his anxiety, he thought Drake's voice held the slightest tinge of something unusual. Maybe it was that he had asked too quickly, or with a kind of sharpness unwarranted by either the hour or the depth of the exchange.

"Uh, you know. A...buddy."

"Who?" Again, the edge of an undefinable urgency, but stronger now.

"Somebody." Josh felt the cogs of his mind rumbling with painful slowness. "From when I was a little kid. Haven't seen them in forever." "Sounds fun." "Yeah." A long beat. As he waited for Drake, his throat effected the most rapid desertification it had ever experienced. Not quite the Sahara, but at least a Gobi. His entire body quivered with adrenaline under the covers.Probably no sleep at all for him tonight.

"'k, night then," said Drake, much more quietly.

"Night."

 

Drake's head shot so quickly up from his pillow when he caught sight of his clock that he thought he'd concussed himself for a few moments. How could it possibly be one o'clock? Cursing, he literally tripped into his jeans--same pair that he'd shucked off last night, no time to pick nicer ones--stomped his feet into some fresh-ish socks, then tore through the stack of t-shirts he thought of as the "I may be the star of children's shows but you totally still want to sleep with me" t-shirts, seeking something perfect. She wouldn't really be into anything with big logos. Would she? She seemed smart. Great at spelling. Better than him, so safer not to risk any writing at all, maybe.

He lifted his eyes toward the clock. _One ten_! He felt like his eyeballs were about to pop from their sockets. On went a nice sleek black v-neck with thin subtle dark-gray stripes, little bit of stretch, tiniest bit tight over his shoulders, but it'd done good work a few times for him before. He thrust his face at the vanity mirror over the dresser. Somehow the hair was all right.

No time for that anyway. Deodorant! He jammed it down the v-neck, applied liberally because he could already feel the clammy anxiety pooling under his arms, checked to ensure he hadn't streaked the fabric with trails of white, then stuffed his feet into his shoes and was off.

 

Two-thirty. No sign of Lovergirl69. Josh slurped at the watery dregs of his second iced coffee listlessly, thinking dark thoughts about the slow-walking tourists around him. Of course this was extremely fucking ridiculous. He could've been kidnapped, held for ransom, had his kidneys harvested, flayed by a maniac, anything.

Coffee wasn't helping. Beneath the most movie-star sunglasses he could find, he had bags under his eyes and jitters in his hands, and his mind churned nauseatingly. _How much longer,_ he asked himself wryly, then answered, _maybe just until I barf from all these stupid butterflies first, aiming at a tourist family who can't fucking shut up and then I can go back, shower_ \--then that entire train of thought derailed, locomotive to caboose, and took some track with it too. A familiar figure attached to a very familiar face--ill concealed by a beanie pulled low and some saucer-sized sunglasses--had suddenly surfaced, bobbing among a tide of plump pale people and dense bunches of Asian photo-snappers in matching ill-fitting baseball caps.

There was no mistaking it--Josh coughed madly, having nearly swallowed his much-chewed straw.

Drake was there, maybe forty-five seconds from seeing him. _He_ needed to very, very quickly _not_ be there.

Later on he'd realize that it made absolutely no sense to flee. He should have stood his ground, been casual, complained truthfully about people who were late all the time, pretended to get a text, turn around with a light "see ya."

Instead he took two steps of his all-out dash for cover, head down and eyes half-shut in his caffeine-enhanced panic. Then he nearly knocked over a small Asian woman with an aggressively rhinestone-studded hat and, as he made a stumbling recovery, the most-empty iced coffee cup flew from his grasp and spattered with Jackson Pollack vigor against the sidewalk. So did his sunglasses. There was no way even Drake could miss the resulting commotion.

 

"That sucks," said Drake, internally cringing at how hollow he sounded. Then again, he did feel hollowed out after the last twenty minutes of utter suspense. Slashrchiq77 had been nowhere to be found, and his mood had swung violently from overpowering relief that he wouldn't be falling through yet more legal trapdoors into bed with some barely-legal girl to self-loathing at even considering meeting some horny teenager who spent all her free time writing him into ridiculous sexual positions with Josh. But she's good, a disobedient part of his mind automatically responded. It added, slyly, and she gets you hard. He drew a long steadying breath and pressed on. "But com'on, man, it's just one chick."

Josh replied, sharply, "Not a girl. Just a regular friend. Old friend, remember? _Male_ friend."

"A dude?" Drake regarded his co-star sidelong from behind his sunglasses. "From where? Why?" As soon as he said this he remembered their midnight conversation and cringed.

"Are you my fucking mother?" Josh never dropped the f-word out loud--at least not like this. With real harshness backing it up. Drake felt a little stung but also felt that he shouldn't. And Josh also didn't seem to want to make eye contact. And his ears had turned cartoonishly red. "Anyway, he didn't show, so--I-I'mma go." "Well," began Drake, beginning a jog of words without knowing where they were running, "Are you hungry? I was gonna go for a juice or something if you wanted to come. Might as well? This place has all the hot chicks, for serious, and not that many tourists or paparazzi and--" "Ugh, speak of the devil," Josh replied, dodging the first iPhone raised in their direction by a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl. Her face was set in what could have been an admirably accurate impression of a snake unhinging its jaw before swallowing its prey."Let's hurry up."

 _How_ , thought Josh dazedly, _do I always get sucked into shit like this by Drake_? He'd been resolutely against day drinking ever since he'd started in show business. Seemed the only rational choice, even if this low bar of abstinence still might not save him from a descent into the D-list tabloid-cover crowd. Now he was sunk deep into the squeaky-legged couch in his room, four Jim Beam and waters (the former generously, the latter not) into breaking his resolution. Stupid resolution anyway. The nauseating blur of self-recrimination (what had he been thinking?), outright anger (what had she been thinking?), and profound shame (what must Drake be thinking?) had all settled into a hot pleasant pool in his belly, and a comfortably warm shimmering behind his eyes. Drake lolled next to him, the picture of lazy ease, his hat and shades tossed to the floor, one hand in his hair, the other holding glass to lips. The mid-afternoon sky shone hard and blue behind him, haloing his head.

They were talking about something. The extremely buxom waitress at the juice bar, maybe (of course she'd winked not at him, but at Drake)? The weather? It must have been something amusing, because he saw Drake grin at him--not the broad toothy one but the slow one, lopsided, the one that sometimes made Josh's stomach do a cartwheel and the back of his neck burn because he knew it had to be the one that Drake used on girls. And then he'd closed the little space between them and was an inch from that mouth, the firm chin.

He'd read often (in bad novels) of people's minds going blank, shutting down, and had always rolled his eyes. He wasn't rolling his eyes now.

Drake's mouth was as full and tender, as fruitlike, as it had always looked. The fuzzy edges of his mouth, his temples, his nape: each of these Josh caressed with his lips, lightly, trying to ignore the almost terrifying tension suddenly building in his groin.

 _Oh fuck._ He knew he'd have to stop, to pull back, and the horrible consequences to follow, so he stopped kissing Drake but kept his face very close, his eyes trained on the skin and flesh of this endlessly frustrating and faunlike creature, defiantly absorbing the pleasure of touching it in what he knew would only be a second or two more before Drake yelled and shoved him away and everything would be over--the show, his career, _them_.

Josh stared first at the curve of one collarbone, half-visible under the collar of Drake's t-shirt, then the other. Then he moved to the little pulse in Drake's neck, then--slowly, out of mounting terror--his jaw, his cheek. Then Drake's hands were on his own neck and jaw, tearing him not away but toward, and they were kissing again. It wasn't a probing tender kiss, like the first, but a bruising one. Their teeth clicked together like castanets; Josh tasted blood.

"You _do_ taste so good," he heard, and froze. Drake stripped himself of his t-shirt with brutal alacrity. "Come on, dude. There's so many things I want to do."

"Drake," he heard himself as though from far away--another badge of hack writing Josh had always hated, but now knew to be only a detached description of truth. "What did you say just now?"

"I said there's a shit ton," Drake's smile was broad and salacious, "of shit I want to do. With you."

"No, before that."

"You taste so good." Drake practically bounced into his lap and kissed him as though wishing to suck the lips off his face."I knew it."

"No, I--wait." Josh wrapped his hands around his costar's shoulders and pushed just enough to break free. He bit back a groan at the touch of Drake's naked skin underhand. "'Drake would never be such a virginal idiot. He'd never take Josh to a goddamn motel with one king-sized bed and then just go to sleep. He'd fuck the brains out of the guy.'" Drake started, but Josh pressed him into the couch. "'You gotta stop calling it a 'member.' This isn't 1492.'" "I was only telling the truth," Drake retorted, triumphantly. "It isn't 1492." "Oh--" Josh let his head drop heavily backward onto the armrest of the couch, not caring if he strained his neck and would be stuck looking at the sky forever. "My. God. Oh my god. You're… Oh my god." Drake was still too drunk to have made sense of anything, but by the frown beginning to unfurl across his face, Josh could see the first comprehension whirring into place. Once again filled with a nauseating whirl of feelings, Josh began withdrawing his hands. What a terrible thing he'd done. What a terrible thing to have happened to them.

"I'm sorry."Maybe he'd still be allowed to see Drake, or talk on the phone, if he were contrite early and often. Maybe they wouldn't judge it sexual assault--could there be a temporary insanity plea here?

"You wrote about fucking me," said Drake, with an ineffable expression, "while I was gagged with my underwear and blindfolded with yours."

"Consensually," Josh blurted.

"About jerking me off in a bubble bath."

"But then taking a shower together to get clean again before bed--"

"About covering me with whipped topping and chocolate sprinkles--"

"I know! I know you don't like chocolate sprinkles!" Josh threw an arm over his eyes, trying not to vomit. "But rainbow would have seemed too--too political. Too obvious!"

Drake chuckled, and Josh had to sit up and look because he was sure it was the beginning of a sob.

But there Drake sat, the chuckle grown up into a boisterous laugh that shook him and bent him double, his head against his updrawn knees and his whole body quaking.

"Don't they say--what's that they say--art exceeds life?"

"Life exceeds art, I think," replied Josh, putting his hand around Drake's ankle.

"Whatever." Drake began to laugh again. "I'm down for a bubble bath."

**Author's Note:**

> Ancient draft found on computer and hastily completed. Figured I'd launch it off, warts and inconsistencies and all.


End file.
